HC+T Update: July 19, 2013
From:
"HC+T Update" <shel@holtz.com>
Subject:
HC+T Update: July 19, 2013
Date:
July 19th 2013
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I've spent most of the week in Canada with the World Council of Credit Unions, where I moderated a panel I've been working with for a couple of months. We spoke to about 300 people in a standing-room-only session where we talked about how credit unions can apply social media in their efforts to attract younger customers. I also gave a two-hour overview of social media to a group of young credit union professionals, and made the social media case to the CEO advisory council. I also managed to get stuck an extra night in Toronto thanks to a staggeringly stupid new system at Pearson International Airport. You have to wait for your checked bag from your domestic flight (I was inbound from Ottawa) to be scanned and cleared before your name appears on a board, allowing you to proceed to U.S. Customs and Immigration. My bag didn't make it onto the flight, so it was never scanned. I just stood there for 25 minutes, then headed to the customer service desk. While they were tryin g to figure out what happened, my flight home took off. Air Canada's customer service rep told me I wasn't the first passenger to get stranded because Air Canada's baggage system can't communicate to Pearson's system that the bag just isn't coming and the passenger should be cleared to board. What we have here, then, is a failure to communicate! |
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It's time for enterprises to come on in to the (activity) stream. The water's fine!In their daily lives, more and more people get their news and information from an activity stream -- the Twitter feed, Facebook's news feed and other tools that send a river of updates to your computer or mobile screen. Yet inside the enterprise, communicators struggle to draw eyes to the intranet, which is seen as something to di in addition to your work rather than an integral part of your work. By adopting the activity stream for internal activities as the anchor of the intranet, employees can stay up to date and more connected. Read more.In the era of the 140-character news cycle, 20th-century approval processes are a recipe for failureI hear from far too many people that their ability to engage in social media is hindered by a bureaucratic approval process for every little piece of content. Yet when Panama seized a North Korean freighter for hauling missile parts hidden in sugar barrels, the country's president justified the action by tweeting out a photo from the ship's hold. Meanwhile, in Canada, reporters had to follow Twitter along with everyone else to find out whom Prime Minister Stephen Harper had named to his cabinet. It's time to bring your approval processes into the 21st century. Read more.Ever wonder how I record FIR on the roadYeah, I know. Probably not. But you can find out anyway. I was in Toronto this week and brought my travel rig with me. Instagram video let me give you a quick visual tour, and I've listed all the various components in response to a reader's request. Read more.This week on FIRFIR #712 covers the end of the era of print magazines dedicated to the PC industry, data showing newswires still usually beat Twitter with breaking news, CIPR's launch of a chat service, and object lessons from Bank of American's use of a Twitter bot. In the News That Fits section, we dig deep into hashtags, explore whether a PR agency screwed up a recruiting effort using Twitter, whether corporations are facing a backlash from mointoring practices in light of the NSA revelations, and how some companies are experimenting with new-fangled paywalls. As always, you'll also hear from Michael Netzley on the social/digital landscape in Asia (where suicides and deaths have been linked to overwork in the PR/communications profession) and Dan York (who reports on domain names from the ICANN meeting in Durban, South Africa). Meanwhile, Neville has posted a Speakers and Speeches episode featuring the talk Brian Solis gave in London at the B2B Huddle. |
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Edelman sparked a lot of conversation this week with its report on PR's role -- and the need for ethical behavior -- in the growing field of native advertising. I'll talk about that, and some contrary points of view, on Monday's episode of For Immediate Release. In the meantime, a lot of other news and research was shared during the past week, some of the most interesting of which (to me, anyway) is listed in today's Wrap. As always, you can find the bigger list of items from which I chose today's Wrap material at my link blog, LinksFromShel.tumblr.com. A deflating bubble doesn't spell the demise of social mediaBusinessWeek crunched the numbers, talked to the experts, and determined the social media bubble is deflating. "Social media companies drew only 2 percent of the venture capital headed to Internet-based enterprises last quarter, according to data published on Tuesday by CB Insights, a research firm that tracks venture-capital investment," writes Joshua Brustein. At least the balloon is deflating and not popping, as it did in the late 1990s. (Remember pets.com and Webvan?) While a lot of the social startups are focused on driving mobile advertising clicks, there are new technologies attracting investment dollars, like cloud computing and big data. But just as ecommerce didn't die -- rather, it thrived -- after the dot-com bust, social media isn't going anywhere merely because it's no longer the sexy new investment target. With well-established players doing quite well and niche participants (like EyeEm, covered below) attracting some attention, social media businesses will do just fine.The shift to mobile social continues apaceSignificantly more people are accessing Facebook from their mobile phones both here in the U.S. and in the U.K., where 20% more people have joined the ranks, according to the social network. Facebook also reports advertising revenue for the mobile platform has gained momentum, according to a Reuters story.Study suggests interaction is not indicative of Facebook message reachMarketers and individuals alike gauge how much a Facebook update has been seen by measuring interaction with the update -- likes, comments and shares, for example. Indeed, Facebook's own EdgeRank algorithm depends on this data to determine which updates will appear in the news feeds of friends and people who have liked a brand page. But those numbers woefully underestimate the actual reach of an update, according to a Stanford University study, which found that users actually reach "35% of their friends with each post and 61% of their friends over the course of a month." One explanation for the tendency to underestimate, according to the study (as quoted by Charlie Warzel in a Buzzfeed article): "...in order to reduce cognitive dissonance, users may lower their estimates for posts that receive few likes or comments. It might be more comfortable to believe that nobody saw it than to believe that many saw it but nobody liked it." The report also suggests that "audience members might not want to admit they saw each piece of content, and sharers might be disappointed to know that many people saw the post but nobody commented or 'Liked' it." In other words, fear of rejection could drive us to lower our estimates of how many people really did see our content. From a communications/marketing perspective, it's easy to shrug off low numbers by blaming EdgeRank, when it's just as likely that the content we produced was, in fact, seen; it just didn't inspire any engagement.Satisfied customers don't necessarily become advocatesMost of the reach marketing campaigns earn comes from advocates spreading the word through their social networks. For brands that aren't able to get its customers and others to amplify the campaign, the lack of reach means the company will have to spend more cash to get the message in front of more people. Consequently, brands need to make advvocacy a brand priority, according a Social@Advocacy, which has studied the issue. "Brands are failing at driving satisfied customers to share in social media," Social@Ogilvy's global head of Data+Analytics and Products said in a press release (reported in Bulldog Reporter's Daily Dog). "Our study suggests that the vast majority of satisfied customers are not publicly advocating for brands on social platforms. Brands have not provided the technology, incentives or content that both inspire and enable customers to speak out positively." The answers include knowing and focusing on fan's true advocacy inspirations by using tools that help identify "clusters" of discussion. By taking this approach, "We notice that Holiday Inn's breakfast tends to drive more advocacy than its peers'; in comparison, Kimpton's bars are more often cited that those of other brands." The brands can use this data to develop strategies that inspire customers to spread related content. The study determined that features were the top driver of advocacy in every country studied; mentions of ads and commercials produced the fewest mentions.Fear of Missing Out (FOMO) drives increased mobile phone adoptionThe fear of missing out on key events, news, new images and status updates ddrives more than half of U.S. adults to check their smartphones more and more often, according to a study from MyLife.com. Reported by John Glenday in The Drum, the study also found that "a quarter of people...would rather quit smoking or another addiction than their social media habit and a similar number...reach straight for their Twitter of Facebook account upon waking." Fear of Missing Out, which has earned the acronym FOMO, "is defined as a pervasive apprehension that others might be having rewarding experiences from which one is absent," says Dr. Andrew Przbylski, a University of Essex psychology lecturer. "FOMO is characterized by the desire to stay continually connected with what others are doing. Our research indicates it can be thought of as a psychological state that ari ses from deprivation of basic psychological needs for competence, automony and relatedness. It also accounts for a significant amount of motivation for social media engagement." And is definitely knowledge that can help communicators and marketers plan strategies and campaigns customers wouldn't want to miss.There's a new source of industry surveys in town, thanks to GoogleFor some data that might be useful in your research, you may no longer have to fork over bundles of money to marketing research organizations. Google's Databoard might have what you're looking for, writes GigaOm's Derrick Harris. "Google has done a bunch of research into how people are using mobile devices, and...has created a service where you can easily find the key data points from those studies and then share them or turn them into infographics." Harris notes that the site reinforces Google's efforts to change "the visual experience of reading reports" while making it simple to reuse the company's data for your own purposes -- and it's all free. You can find Databoard here.Social visual trend moves into the stock photo realmInstagram and Pinterest may have kicked the social visual communication trend into high gear, but they have their limitations. For example, you can't make a buck or two from someone who wants to use the shot you shared in their blog or marketing campaign. For that, look at EyeEm, which is gaining a million new users a month and has closed a $5 million Series A round, says Natalie Robehmed in Forbes. Rather than pursue advertising for income, EyeEm wants to become "the go-to for mobile crowd-sourced images." The app organizes images shared by users based on keywords, along with time and location metadata, making them easier to search. By letting users sell the rights to their photos in the EyeEm Marketplace, those "looking for a type of image can place a request." The company is working with some early partners like Red Bull and Lufthansa "to offer EyeEm users revenue share in exchange for the licensing of their image." Photographers will be given the opportunity to grant permission before any users can buy their photos.New venture from Last.fm founders is like Facebook Social Graph on steroidsUsing the Facebook Social Graph search, you can find things like people from the U.K. who like pubs, the founds of Internet radio site Last.fm want to take the concept to a whole other level. Their new Web discovery tool, Lumi, sifts through your browing history to recommend to others stuff to watch, read and buy. "Just as Last.fm and Pandora can pivot from your love of Arcade Fire to Radiohead based on your listening preferences, Lumi uses your online browsing habits -- noting your interests, from travel to Apple to environmentalism -- to serve up related Web pages from sources both prominent and arcane," writes Huffington Post's Timothy Stenovec. The sites Lumi recommends is based on sites other members visit, finding pages "that are trending among Lumi members, delivering the results in an elegant, graphically rich tiled layout." The founders shrug of f privacy concerns, claiming "people are savvy enough to dabble in their service and still keep some activities private by using browser modes like Chrome's Icognito or Safari's private browsing option." Personally, I'd be willing to bet a random street poll would reveal that most people have never heard of Igcognito, but it still sounds like an intriguing site. If it takes off, you may be hearing about content LEO -- Lumi Engine Optimization. |
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Are your writers prepared for the social visual revolution?Let's talk about my new training program aimed at writers who need to learn their new role in a media landscape that prizes images over words. The rise of Instagram, Pinterest and Tumblr are key indicators of the trend, along with the fact that half the items that make it into your Facebook newsfeed are images. Six-second videos on Vine and 15-second videos from Instagram are hot, as are infographics. And new services like EyeEm are growing fast while recent additions like SnapChat are gobbling up new users. Even the graphics we marry with text are not integral rather than supplemental. Yet most writers are unprepared to turn their talents to storytelling and message delivery through imagery. My new workshop -- which I'll deliver on-site to your company -- will bring your writers up to speed, whether they write for internal or external communications. Give me a shout at +1.415.881.7435 or email me at shel@holtz.com. |
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Since 1996, HC+T has helped organizations communicate effectively in the emerging online space using intranets to reach employees and various dimensions of the Internet to communicate with other stakeholder audiences.
HC+T provides a full range of services for large organizations, from speaking and training to communication audits and strategic plan development. Visit us at Holtz.com. |
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